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Brain candy for Happy MutantsTue, 03 Mar 2015 20:15:15 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1The Twinkie Murder trial of Harvey Milk's killerhttp://boingboing.net/2015/01/05/paul-krassner-on-the-trial-of.html
http://boingboing.net/2015/01/05/paul-krassner-on-the-trial-of.html#commentsMon, 05 Jan 2015 12:00:01 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=356009Berkeley Barb, Paul Krassner covered the trial of Dan White, who was found guilty of killing San Francisco gay leader Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, yet received a shockingly lenient sentence.]]>The day before the trial began, the Assistant District Attorney slated to prosecute the case was standing in an elevator at the Hall of Justice. He heard a voice behind him speak his name.

“Tom Norman, you’re a motherfucker for prosecuting Dan White.”

He turned around and saw a half-dozen police inspectors. He flushed and faced the door again. These cops were his drinking buddies, but now they were all mad at him.

“I didn’t know who said it,” Norman confided to the courtroom artist for a local TV station, “and I didn’t want to know.”

One could only speculate about the chilling effect that incident had on him, conceivably engendering his sloppy presentation of the prosecution’s case. For example, in his opening statement, Norman told the jury that White had reloaded his gun in the mayor’s office, but not according to the transcript of White’s tape-recorded confession.

Q. “And do you know how many shots you fired [at Moscone]?”
A. “Uh, no, I don’t, I don’t, I out of instinct when I—I reloaded the gun, ah—you know, it’s just the training I had, you know.”

Q. “Where did you reload?”
A. “I reloaded in my office when, when I was—I couldn’t out in the hall.”

Which made it slightly less instinctive. Norman sought to prove that the murders had been premeditated, yet ignored this evidence of premeditation in White’s own confession. If White’s reloading of his gun had been, as he said, “out of instinct,” then he indeed would have reloaded in Moscone’s office. And if it were truly an instinctive act, then he would have reloaded again after killing Milk.

One psychiatrist testified that White must have been mistaken in his recollection of where he reloaded. The evidence on this key question became so muddled that one juror would later recall, “It was a very important issue, but it was never determined where he reloaded — in Moscone’s office or just prior to saying, ‘Harvey, I want to talk with you.’”

In his confession, White had stated, “I don’t know why I put [my gun] on.” At the trial, psychiatrists offered reasons ranging from psychological (it was “a security blanket”) to practical (for “self-defense” against a People’s Temple hit squad) — this was one week after the Jonestown massacre. But, as a former police officer and member of the Police Commission told me, “An off-duty cop carrying his gun for protection isn’t gonna take extra bullets. If he can’t save his life with the bullets already in his gun, then he’s done for.”

Dan White’s tearful confession was made to his old friend and former softball coach, Police Inspector Frank Falzon. When Falzon called White “Sir,” it was a painful indication of his struggle to be a professional homicide inspector. Now, while Falzon was on the witness stand, one reporter passed a note to her colleague, suggesting that Falzon was wearing a “Free Dan White” T-shirt under his shirt.

At one point in his confession White claimed, “I was leaving the house to talk, to see the mayor, and I went downstairs to—to make a phone call, and I had my gun there.” But there was a phone upstairs, and White was home alone. His wife had already gone to the Hot Potato.

But Falzon didn’t question him about that. Moreover, he neglected to pose the simple question that any school-kid playing detective would ask: “Dan, who did you call?” – the answer to which could have been easily verified.

Prosecutor Norman simply bungled his case and allowed the defense to use White’s confession to its own advantage. The mere transcript could never capture the sound of White’s anguish. He was like a little boy sobbing uncontrollably because he wouldn’t be allowed to play on the Little League team. When the tape was played in court, some reporters wept, including me, along with members of White’s family, spectators, jurors, an assistant D.A. — who had a man-sized tissue box on his table—and Dan White himself, crying both live and on tape simultaneously.

If the prosecution hadn’t entered this tape as evidence, the defense could have done so, saving it as the final piece of evidence for dramatic effect.

Yet the heart-wrenching confession was contradicted by White’s former aide, Denise Apcar. In his confession, White said that after shooting Moscone, “I was going to go down the stairs, and then I saw Harvey Milk’s aide across the hall . . . and then it struck me about what Harvey had tried to do [oppose White’s reappointment], and I said, ‘Well, I’ll go talk to him.’” But Apcar testified that while she was driving White to City Hall, he said he wanted to talk to both Moscone and Milk.

On the morning of the murders, although Apcar had let him out of her car at the front entrance to City Hall, he went around the corner to the McAllister Street side and climbed through that basement window because he was carrying a concealed weapon. Now, in court, defense attorney Schmidt was cross-examining a witness as to how many other occasions he had observed such entries being made through this window.

A. “Maybe twenty-five times.”
Q. “Then this was not unusual?”
A. “It was usually the same person.”

On redirect examination, prosecutor Norman elicited from this witness an admission that he didn’t know the name of the individual who entered City Hall through that window, but “always assumed he was an employee, carrying small boxes.”

Reporters wondered about the contents of those small boxes. Speculation ranged from cocaine to the parts of a nuclear bomb.

***

My daughter Holly and I had moved into a great apartment on States Street, halfway up a long, steep hill, and in the back was what she called “our magic garden.”

Our block was just off the intersection of Castro and Market — the heart of the “gay ghetto” — and there was a Chinese laundry at the foot of the hill called the Gay Launderette, which, even though it had changed owners several times, always kept that name for good will.

There was a clothing store named “Does Your Mother Know?” and a bulletin board announcing an “Anal Awareness and Relaxation Workshop,” and jokes that gays told about themselves, like, “Why do the Castro clones all have mustaches?” The answer was, “To hide the stretch marks.”

I met Harvey Milk when he ran a neighborhood camera shop, and I watched him developing into the gay equivalent of Martin Luther King. Had he lived, he might have been elected the first gay mayor. But he already envisioned the possibility that he would become a martyr. After he was elected supervisor, he taped a message for his constituents, including this prophetic fear and hope: “If bullets should enter my brain, let those bullets blow open every closet door in this country.”

The Los Angeles Times published a piece by freelancer Mike Weiss which suggested that Dan White’s political constituency consisted largely of working-class folks “who are being slowly squeezed out by the advance of a movement whose vanguard is homosexual.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Charles McCabe quoted from that article in a discussion of what he called “the homosexual invasion” of San Francisco. He went on to make derogatory remarks about White’s supposed dealings with blacks on his high school baseball team. He later backed down from these remarks, telling his readers, “I have since concluded these statements cannot be confirmed and I retract them.”

White’s lawyer had told the Chronicle that McCabe’s comments were “actionable.” Even though White killed the mayor and a supervisor, the Chronicle was evidently worried that he might sue the paper for damaging his reputation.

In his election campaign, White had distributed leaflets referring to the problem of “social deviants.” But his wife, Mary Ann, explained that “Dan is not against homosexuals — he is one of the most tolerant men. When he said ‘social deviants’ he didn’t mean homosexuals, he meant people who deviate from the social norm, criminals, people who hit somebody over the head, people who jail won’t help.”

But in court, prosecutor Norman asked Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver if she had ever heard White make any anti-gay statements. She told of his “long diatribe” during a debate about the annual Halloween closing-off of Polk Street—a hostile speech about “how gays’ lifestyle had to be contained.”

Apparently, White’s attorney Schmidt had never said “bullshit” in front of his mother before, but now she was sitting in the courtroom, and on cross-examination he had to use that word in asking Silver if that was how she had characterized the defense in this trial. She had, indeed. Thus was she able to provide the jury with presumably their only input from the outside world. But Schmidt also asked Silver if she herself was “part of the gay community.”

She responded, “Are you asking if I’m gay?”
He said, “Yes.”
She said, “No.”
In the corridor, Schmidt admitted to me that it had been “a ridiculous question.”

***

Each day of the trial, I would take an hour-long walk from my home to the Hall of Justice. One morning on the news, there was an obituary for the composer of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I found myself singing it ritualistically on my daily walk to court, even as I passed gas-line after gas-line, every filling station a potential locale for the violence that had already been taking place, every automobile festering with the kind of frustration that could possibly turn a mild-mannered driver into an instant Dan White. He had come to represent the vanguard of vigilante justice in Stress Wars.

A couple of blocks away from the courthouse there was a “Free Dan White” graffito, only it had been altered to read “Freeze Dan White.” That may not have been such a bad idea, for he was a missing link in the evolution of our species. He was the personification of obsolescent machismo.

This trial was White’s first encounter group, but he never testified in his own defense. Rather, he told his story to several psychiatrists hired by the defense, and they repeated those details in court. At a press conference, though, Berkeley psychiatrist Lee Coleman denounced the practice of psychiatric testimony, labeling it as “a disguised form of hearsay.”

Mary Ann White sat behind her husband in the front row of spectators, her Madonna-like image in direct view of the jury. Since she was scheduled to testify, prosecutor Norman could have had her excluded from the courtroom. In fact, he could have excluded from the jury George Mintzer, an executive at the Bechtel Company, which had contributed to White’s campaign for supervisor. Mintzer became foreman of the jury.

For Mary Ann, this trial was like a Quaker funeral where mourners share anecdotes about the deceased and you find out things you never knew about someone you’d been living with for years. The day after her own tearful testimony, she was back in the front row, taking notes on the testimony of a psychiatrist who had previously interviewed her and taken notes. So now she was writing down poignant squibs of her own recycled observations, such as “Lack of sex drive” and “Danny didn’t intend to shoot anyone.”

I had wanted to record testimony, but tape equipment wasn’t allowed in the courtroom, although the judge did give permission to vice squad officers to place a recording device on two young boys attending the trial. In court that morning, a sixty-three-year-old man had tried to pick them up.

According to the police report, he had in his possession two vials with “peach colored pills” plus eight white pills. “The juveniles gave details of how the suspect had began [sic] a conversation and by passing notes in the courtroom, offered them drugs.” Now, three narcotics officers monitored their conversations and later arrested the dirty old man in the Hall of Justice cafeteria.

There was a moment in the trial when it suddenly seemed to be the courtroom incarnation of a TV program called Make Me Laugh. Dan White was the contestant, and all the witnesses were attempting to make him laugh. Laurie Parker, a supervisor’s aide, almost succeeded. White’s demeanor changed perceptibly when she testified that he used to hold the door open for her. Later, she confirmed that “He was smirking at me.”

Why was Dan White smirking? Could it have been his awareness of the absurdity that he had slain Moscone and Milk, yet here was a witness testifying as to his chivalry? “Smirking”—the exact same verb that White had used to describe his perception of what Milk did to trigger his own death—just as Jack Ruby had referred to Lee Harvey Oswald’s “smirky Communist expression” immediately before he shot Oswald.

***

J.I. Rodale, health-food advocate and publishing magnate, once claimed in an editorial in his magazine, Prevention, that Lee Harvey Oswald had been seen holding a Coca-Cola bottle only minutes after the assassination of President Kennedy. Rodale concluded that Oswald was not responsible for the killing because his brain was confused. He was a “sugar drunkard.” Rodale, who died of a heart attack during a taping of The Dick Cavett Show — in the midst of explaining how good nutrition guarantees a long life—called for a full-scale investigation of crimes caused by sugar consumption.

In a surprise move, Dan White’s defense team presented just such a bio-chemical explanation of his behavior, blaming it on compulsive gobbling down of sugar-filled junk-food snacks. This was a purely accidental tactic. Dale Metcalf, an attorney, told me how he happened to be playing chess with Steven Scherr, an associate of Dan White’s attorney.

Metcalf had just read Orthomolecular Nutrition by Abram Hoffer. He questioned Scherr about White’s diet and learned that, while under stress, White would consume candy bars and soft drinks. Metcalf recommended the book to Scherr, suggesting the author as an expert witness. In his book, Hoffer revealed a personal vendetta against doughnuts, and White had once eaten five doughnuts in a row.

During the trial, psychiatrist Martin Blinder stated that, on the night before the murders, while White was “getting depressed about the fact he would not be reappointed, he just sat there in front of the TV set, bingeing on Twinkies.” In my notebook, I scribbled “Twinkie defense,” and wrote about it in my next report.

In court, White just sat there in a state of complete control bordering on catatonia, as he listened to an assembly line of psychiatrists tell the jury how out of control he had been. One even testified that, “If not for the aggravating fact of junk food, the homicides might not have taken place.” And so it came to pass that a pair of political assassinations was transmuted into voluntary manslaughter.

***

The Twinkie was invented in 1930 by James Dewar, who described it as “the best darn-tootin’ idea I ever had.” He got the idea of injecting little cakes with sugary cream-like filling and came up with the name while on a business trip, where he saw a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes.

“I shortened it to make it a little zippier for the kids,” he said.

In the wake of the Twinkie defense, a representative of the ITT-owned Continental Baking Company asserted that the notion that overdosing on the cream-filled goodies could lead to murderous behavior was “poppycock” and “crap”—apparently two of the artificial ingredients in Twinkies, along with sodium pyrophosphate and yellow dye—while another spokesperson for ITT couldn’t believe “that a rational jury paid serious attention to that issue.”

Nevertheless, some jurors did. One remarked after the trial that “It sounded like Dan White had hypoglycemia.” Doug Schmidt’s closing argument became almost an apologetic parody of his own defense. He told the jury that White did not have to be “slobbering at the mouth” to be subject to diminished capacity. Nor, he said, was this simply a case of “eat a Twinkie and go crazy.”

Prosecutor Tom Norman’s closing argument mixed purple prose—“The defendant had that quality of thought which would embrace the weighing of considerations”— with supercilious sarcasm—“If your friends won’t testify for you, who will?”

During the trial, reporter Francis Moriarty had suggested to District Attorney Joe Freitas that prosecutor Norman was blowing the case—echoing similar sentiments by several journalists and attorneys who were monitoring the trial. Freitas passed along the critique to Norman and homicide inspector Frank Falzon.

Falzon challenged Moriarty: “Are you referring to investigative or prosecutorial?”

But the dividing line had become blurred. Falzon sat silently next to Norman at the prosecution table when an ex-cop was allowed on the jury. And neither Falzon nor Norman thought it advisable to subpoena as witnesses those cops with whom Dan White had discussed football shortly after the murders took place and he turned himself in.

When Superior Court Judge Walter Calcagno presented the jury with his instructions, he assured them access to the evidence, except that they would not be allowed to have possession of White’s gun and his ammunition at the same time. After all, these deliberations can get pretty heated. The judge was acting like a concerned schoolteacher offering Twinkies to students but withholding the cream filling to avoid any possible mess.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Twinkie, inventor Dewar said, “Some people say Twinkies are the quintessential junk food, but I believe in the things. I fed them to my four kids, and they feed them to my fifteen grandchildren. Twinkies never hurt them.”

Nonetheless, spray-painted on the walls of San Francisco, graffiti cautioned, “Eat a Twinkie—Kill a Cop!”

***

After the jury filed out to decide Dan White’s fate, spectators and reporters alike tried to determine for themselves what could possibly be a fair punishment. The prosecutor kept emphasizing that George Moscone and Harvey Milk were “duly elected”—the wording in Proposition 7 which would enable him to push for the death penalty. Ironically, this case indicated that the death penalty did not serve as a deterrent, even for Dan White, who as a supervisor had fought for the death penalty because it would serve as a deterrent.

Originally, each juror had to swear eternal devotion to the American criminal justice system. It was that very system which had allowed for a flimsy, bungled prosecution coupled with a shrewd defense attorney’s transmutation of a twin political assassination into the mere White Sugar Murders.

While the jury was out deliberating, reporters passed the time by playing poker or chess, reading books, checking out the porn files in the press room, embroidering sentimental samplers and, mainly, trying to second-guess the jury.

On May 21, 1979, Francis Moriarty brought in a used Ouija board he had purchased at a flea market. The question we reporters asked it was: “When will the verdict come in?” The answer was between 5 and 6.

At 5:25, the jurors walked into court to deliver the verdict. They appeared somber, except for the former cop, who smiled and triumphantly tapped the defense table twice with two fingers as he passed by, telegraphing the decision of voluntary manslaughter. White would be sentenced to only seven years in prison.

“No more Nazi dyke look,” the victorious defense attorney announced in the hallway, looking forward to a haircut.

“It was a good fight,” the embittered prosecutor pretended, “but we lost.”

He should’ve been grateful the jury had not declared that George Moscone and Harvey Milk were killed in selfdefense, or that they had actually committed suicide.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2015/01/05/paul-krassner-on-the-trial-of.html/feed0Enthralling Books: Johnny Got His Gunhttp://boingboing.net/2012/07/30/enthralling-books-johnny-got.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/07/30/enthralling-books-johnny-got.html#commentsMon, 30 Jul 2012 19:30:05 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=173735This is one in a series of essays about enthralling books. I asked my friends and colleagues to recommend a book that took over their life.]]>This is one in a series of essays about enthralling books. I asked my friends and colleagues to recommend a book that took over their life. I told them the book didn't have to be a literary masterpiece. The only thing that mattered was that the book captivated them and carried them into the world within its pages, making them ignore the world around them. I asked: "Did you shirk responsibilities so you could read it? Did you call in sick? Did you read it until dawn? That's the book I want you to tell us about!" See all the essays in the Enthralling Book series here. -- Mark

Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo

I hadn't read my first complete book of fiction until I was twenty-one: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I read it all in one night, identifying so strongly with the adolescent alienation of Holden Caulfield that I wrote a letter to Salinger, asking permission to use his character in a novel I planned to write. He gave the most appropriate response he possibly could -- he completely ignored my request. His Zen silence was so eloquent that for years I would continue to cringe with embarrassment at how incredibly naïve I had been.

In 1953, publisher friend and mentor Lyle Stuart lent me the second novel I read, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, who had been an unfriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. “I shall answer in my own words,” he testified. “Very many questions can be answered ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ only by a moron or a slave.”

As a result, he became a victim of the Hollywood blacklist and won an Academy Award for best screenplay under an assumed name. He finally used his own name in the screen credits for Spartacus.

Johnny Got His Gun, originally published in 1939, was about a soldier so severely wounded that, with the aid of modern medical technology, he remained alive but without the senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste. He had nothing left except the sense of touch and his consciousness. The first half was how he came to realize his situation, and the second half was what he could do about it.

That book had such a tremendous impact on me, it served as my literary Bible. The gospel wasn’t about the antiwar stance so much as the urge to communicate. I was afraid that every book I read after that would be anti-climactic.

“There's a whole generation who never even heard of it,” I said to Lyle Stuart. “Why don't you publish a new edition?” Which he did.

He also lent me Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis. It was about a white man who discovered that he had “Negro blood.” Lyle felt so strongly about the race issue that when he had been courting a lovely redhead, smart and witty, he told her that he was “part Negro.” She passed the test and they got married.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2012/07/30/enthralling-books-johnny-got.html/feed22Mind Blowing Movies: Middle Men (2009), by Paul Krassnerhttp://boingboing.net/2012/06/08/mind-blowing-movies-middle-me.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/06/08/mind-blowing-movies-middle-me.html#commentsFri, 08 Jun 2012 17:00:29 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=164081This week, Boing Boing is presenting a series of essays about movies that have had a profound effect on our invited essayists.]]>This week, Boing Boing is presenting a series of essays about movies that have had a profound effect on our invited essayists. See all the essays in the Mind Blowing Movies series here. -- Mark

Middle Men (2009), by Paul Krassner

[Video Link] Speaking of his recent movie about the early years of the Internet porn industry, Middle Men, producer Christopher Mallick admits, "I think that it's based on a true story, but that doesn't mean it's all true." He should know. The main character -- Jack Harris, portrayed by the ever grimacing Luke Wilson -- is based on him.

Mallick in real life and Harris on screen both founded Paycom Billing Services, an Internet company that processes payments for porn sites. Money used to grow on trees, then it popped out of banks' brick walls, and now it's busy floating around in cyberspace. Until 1995, you weren't able to purchase anything online. But, thanks to a software code enabling secure transactions, Harris brags, "We could take a credit card from anywhere in the world and deliver a product to anywhere in the world. We can make a profit on every transaction. We're just the middle men." And now it's been estimated that porn is featured on nearly 40 percent of all Web sites.

In his cameo role as a powerful politician, Kelsey Grammer confronts Harris: "You peddle porn over the Internet."

The senator smirks and Harris continue to read other titles, then says, "You realize you've just attempted to blackmail a publicly elected state official -- and it worked. Can I count on your vote next year?"

"You got it."

That scene is not so far fetched, either. In his book, Family of Secrets, investigative journalist Russ Baker writes that there are powers behind the elected or selected that call a lot of the shots, and that presidents have much less power and independence than he had assumed: "Initiating reforms or standing up to powerful interests can invite retribution of a kind I had not imagined. Presidents are subject not only to pressure but also to entrapment, blackmail, and even, in one way or another, removal."

Standup comic Kevin Pollak plays the part of an agent for the FBI's Organized Crime Task Force. He persuades Harris to cooperate in the war on terror. It seems that, among the millions of consumers logging in to those porn sites for which Harris is a middle man, many happen to be Arab terrorists. Simply because, in the words of that FBI agent, "They're men." Technology makes it possible to exploit their horniness, so the moment they click on to one of those sites, the United States military can pinpoint and terminate them.

Back in real life, immediately after 9/11, CNN ran a list of the hijackers and people who had tickets and were suspected of being hijackers. "Back then," says Mallick, "we recorded it and I took it in to one of my partners and said, 'Let's run these names through our database.' He said, 'You're crazy.' 'Let's just see what happens.' We had a hit and it was a guy that subsequently was arrested. One of the hijackers who went down with the plane had bought a membership to a site with an online check.

"We traced the check to a bank in San Diego, called the FBI, who was down the hall from us, and said, 'We have a hit.' These guys are apparently sitting in an apartment, ordering pizza and porn on their way to meet Allah. Anyhow, they found the check, went the apartment, found the phone record, found the cell phone number that one of these guys was using. One of the would-be bombers in Chicago was holed up in the Hyatt in downtown Chicago and the FBI raided it, on CNN, and arrested this guy."

In Middle Men, there was an incident that was deleted from the big orgy party scene. It was removed because of concerns that the MPAA would give the flick an NC-17 rating instead of an R rating. In a scene which lasts for two minutes, Harris wanders around a huge mansion, passing by naked men and women drinking and dancing, but what would be omitted was when he opens a door, only to find a couple of women performing oral sex on a man. It was posted on a Web site, but soon taken down. Ironically, remaining on that clip is a commercial for the film itself.

Ultimately, then, Middle Men was intended for the eyes of Middle America. Mallick points out that "The same guy who's going to Toy Story 3 is also going to come to Middle Men." Well, at least there's one thing that those two films have in common. The moving force in each one is a Woody.

Most likely your daily newspaper didn't acknowledge the death of Robert Anton Wilson on January 11, 2007.

]]>Wilson and Krassner Display Maturity . . . Maybe

Most likely your daily newspaper didn't acknowledge the death of Robert Anton Wilson on January 11, 2007. He was 74. The prolific author and countercultural icon had been suffering from post-polio syndrome. Caregivers read all of his late wife Arlen's poetry to him at his bedside and e-mailed me that "He was quite cheered up by the time we left. He definitely needed to die. His body was turning on him in ways that would not allow him to rest."

In his final blog entry on January 6, Wilson wrote: "I don't see how to take death seriously. I look forward without dogmatic optimism, but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying." Actually, it was expected that he would die seven months earlier. On June 19, 2006, he sent this haiku (with one syllable missing) to his electronic cabal:

Well what do you know?Another day has passedand I'm still not not.

We originally became friends in 1959, when his first published article graced the cover of The Realist. It was titled "The Semantics of God," and he suggested that "The Believer had better face himself and ask squarely: Do I literally believe that 'God' has a penis? If the answer is no, then it seems only logical to drop the ridiculous practice of referring to 'God' as 'he.'" Wilson then began writing a regular column, "Negative Thinking."

In 1964, I ran another front-cover story by him, "Timothy Leary and His Psychological H-Bomb," which began: "The future may decide that the two greatest thinkers of the 20th Century were Albert Einstein, who showed how to create atomic fission in the physical world, and Timothy Leary, who showed how to create atomic fission in the psychological world. The latter discovery may be more important than the former; there are some reasons for thinking that it was made necessary by the former. Leary may have shown how our habits of thought can be changed."

Wilson took that notion as his personal marching orders, altering the consciousness of countless grateful readers of his 35 books -- from Sex, Drugs & Magick to Everything Is Under Control: An Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories -- all written with the aid of that good old creative fuel, marijuana. He once told me about his creative process: "It's rather obsessive-compulsive, I think. I write the first draft straight, then rewrite stoned, then rewrite straight again, then rewrite stoned again, and so on, until I'm absolutely delighted with every sentence, or irate editors start reminding me about deadlines -- whichever comes first."

He became a pothead in 1955, but a few years before his death he told the audience at a Prophets Conference, "I haven't smoked pot in about twelve... hours, and I want you to know it's great to be clean." He enjoyed peppering his presentations at such distinguished New Age events with "motherfuckers" and "cocksuckers," and was disinvited from participating in future Prophet Conferences because, said the organizers, "What we feel to be important to your insights are being lost to the audience when packaged in hard and harsh language."

Maybe Logic: a documentary about Robert Anton Wilson

Wilson once described his writings as "intellectual comedy." He told an Internet database, Contemporary Authors: "If my books do what I intend, they should leave the reader feeling that the universe is capable of doing something totally shocking and unexpected in the next five minutes. I am trying to show that life without certainty can be exhilarating, liberating, a great adventure." He called his philosophy "Maybe Logic," which became the title of a documentary about him (above).

Stephen Gaskin, founder of The Farm commune, writes, "I had the good fortune to visit with Robert at his house and meet his wife. When I saw the beautiful relationship between them, I understood why the sex scenes in his books are so nicely written that they stand out above everyone else's sex scenes that I've read. One of my next encounters with him was standing on the sidewalk of a cold November day in Amsterdam waiting for a taxi.

"He didn't have enough of a coat, and he was standing in the cold with his collar turned up and his hands stuck in his pockets. It was a while after his wife had died and he looked quite forlorn. We collected him up, put a warm coat on him, and put a joint in his mouth. It was a real hoot to get to be friends with one of my very favorite writers. His book, Illuminatus, is a benchmark in science-fiction and contemporary paranoia."

"According to reliable sources, I died on February 22, 1994 -- George Washington's birthday. I felt nothing special or shocking at the time, and believed that I still sat at my word processor working on a novel called Bride of Illuminatus. At lunch-time, however, when I checked my voice mail, I found that Tim Leary and a dozen friends had already called to ask to speak to me, or -- if they still believed in Reliable Sources -- to offer support and condolences to my grieving family. I quickly gathered that the news of my tragic end had appeared on the Internet: 'Noted science-fiction author Robert Anton Wilson was found dead in his home yesterday, apparently the victim of a heart attack. [He] was noted for his libertarian viewpoints, love of technology and off the wall humor. Mr. Wilson is survived by his wife and two children.'"

R. U. Sirius, co-author of Counterculture Through the Ages, writes, "Robert Anton Wilson enjoyed his first death so much, he decided to try it again. As the result of medical expenses and problems with the IRS, he found himself in a financial squeeze towards the end of his life. Word went out and the Internet community responded by sending him $68,000 within the first couple of days.

"This allowed him to die with the comfort, grace and dignity that he deserved. He taught us all that 'the universe contains a maybe.' So maybe there is an afterlife, and maybe Bob's consciousness is hovering around all of us who were touched by his words and his presence all these years. And if that's the case, I'm sure he'd like to see you do something strange and irreverent -- and yet beautiful -- in his honor."